Category: general

Here are three news stories to illustrate my belief.

First, via Drudge, an essay entitled “10 Reasons Not To Kill President Bush“. Here’s the best part.

In all seriousness, I don’t hate President Bush. I dislike a lot of his administration’s choices, but I think he’s a good man doing a difficult job. As a leader, you’re always going to be hated. I am too often shocked by the vitriolic repulsion many people feel for our leader and America in general, especially because the loathing is often poorly informed. I’ve met people on this campus who see America as the worst human rights abuser in the world (unlike the angelic paradise of Cambodia) and people who sway liberal not because they actually know anything about issues but because it’s popular.

Liberalism has to be more than a college fad or a collection of loudmouths whose idiotic comments stir headlines. The rabid dislike some people feel for a man they’ve never even met makes me ashamed to be a Democrat.

Second, a Japanese-American will be making a documentary about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to air on cable next summer.

Steven Okazaki, a 53-year-old third-generation Japanese-American, said he hopes the documentary would convey to Americans the sentiments and messages of people who suffered the U.S. atomic bombing in August 1945.

Ignore, as always, the vitriolic and idiotic comments from the peanut gallery at Japan Today. The sheer amount of “They deserved it!” notes is appalling. I have heard a lot of debate about the bombing, and I understand the practical argument that it “saved lives”, but I can’t stomach casually dismissing the suffering of the people–men, women, and children–who were burned, melted, maimed, pounded with horribly painful, slow-killing radiation, and (in the merciful cases) incinerated.

It’s important to remember the past, and not just as numbers. I’ve been to Hiroshima’s Peace Park twice, and I welcome the chance to see this documentary. Not out of some sort of guilt, but because I respect the people who had to make that choice, I respect the victims, and I don’t ever want to forget why such a thing can never occur again.

And third…Gaijin, stay home!

Almost 90% of the Japanese public are concerned that a growth in travelers from overseas may lead to an increase in crimes, a transport ministry survey showed Sunday. Asked about the negative aspects of a rise in visitors, 89.4% said criminals, who pretend to be tourists, may enter the country, followed by 33.4%, who responded they worry about problems caused by differences in languages and customs.

This makes me uncomfortable. It feels like a decided step backwards for Japan.

I was following a trail of links (BoingBoing over to Joi Ito where I found a trackback from S A L E S M I N D S E T) and I surfed over to that last blog to see what it was about. I actually never found the post that had tracked back to Ito’s blog, but a cursory scan of the topics that were on the site made me wonder what exactly it was. It seemed to be a professional blog–that is, he’s paid to post there by a company. So I checked the About Me section to see who he works for, and why.

I discovered that this guy is in charge of Tucows’ attempt to branch out into the world of blogging. In his sidebar, you’ll see some “example” blogs–they’re totally not real, but somebody put a lot of time and effort into making them look authentic (and snazzy). I visited the homepage of the service, Blogware.com, and looked around some more.

I’m still not exactly sure what this service is. I mean, is it just another Blogger/LiveJournal/Xanga/Blog-City/Typepad? Why are the “about us” pages so elaborate? And why do they have so many “example” blogs and hardly any real ones?

It seems a little slimy to me, and I’m not sure why.

I think maybe I have an idea of how blogs are, and maybe I think of them as being more grassroots? Whereas this service seems more like a sell-out. They essentially tell you how to make your blog, including what you might write about. It makes blogging seem less like something for people who have something to say, and more like something for everyone to do, regardless of whether or not they have any insights whatsoever.

Maybe I feel threatened by the potential levelling of the playing field? But I’m not sure about that, because I think it’s great for people to have tools that can help them easily create online journals. Maybe, instead, I’m worried that people who are boring will feel like they need to blog–that the blogosphere will become saturated by sleep-inducing diatribes. (Don’t we have enough of those already?)

I don’t mean to sound elitist, but I guess I can’t get behind a company whose strategy is to encourage anyone and everyone, regardless of talent, ability, and insightfulness, to create something which they can then charge for. (Because, ultimately, that’s got to be the point of this, right?)

But maybe I’m too harsh. After all, maybe one of those people who never would have blogged without encouragement will develop into a passionate, fascinating writer. It’d be a shame for that not to happen. And somebody’s gotta make money off of blogging somewhere, right?

I suppose I’m just concerned about how the blogosphere is evolving, where it’s going, why it’s going there, and what will happen to it. I hope it grows and thrives. I don’t want to see it burn out, or amass into nothing but a glut of mediocre whine-rants.

Of course, saying all of this makes me wonder about my own blog. I’ve mentioned to others that the main purpose of this journal is to archive myself. (Yes, new readers, I am that arrogant.) This journal will remain after my death as an information archive for my biographers. My links to news stories will tell people what I was interested in. And hopefully my projects and workshops (these don’t exist yet, by the way) will help literature students understand my process. But at the same time…I am very much interested in contemporary feedback.

I look back on my more recent journal entries and I see very few comments. Many of the people who have linked to me in the past haven’t remarked on anything in quite some time. I wonder why they liked my blog to begin with, and whether or not they still like it. I wonder if I am posting too many links, and not enough commentary. I wonder if what I’m writing about is uninteresting. I wonder if I spend too little time revising and polishing my posts. I also wonder if I’m simply not attracting readers due to a lack of advertising.

If anyone is still out there, won’t you chime in? What am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? Is there a reason you don’t comment much? What do you think of my blog in light of my discussion above?

In my dream, I had written a brief story about an event in my life, and posted it. After that, other people kept coming and posting their own stories, without having to be asked. Even my mom came by and wrote one.

I was so excited and happy.

Learn Japanese through the Conditioned Response Method at the Japan Times. Via Simon.

Apparently Big Ben has inexplicably stopped several times in history, and recently did so again. While nobody really knows why the clock stops, weather and damage from the Luftwaffe attack during WWII are possible causes. The article doesn’t explicitly state the latter, but in regards to the former notes that

There has been speculation a recent spell of hot weather may have been to blame. Temperatures in London reached 90 Saturday, and forecasters called it England’s hottest day in May since 1953.

Yesterday I read that Seattle, Washington is under a heat advisory, and that the temperature there has gotten up to a positively sweltering 89 degrees Fahrenheit in the past week.

Poor dears. I can’t imagine how they’d react to living in Yatsushiro, Japan, or Augusta, Georgia.

Chris (Man in Japan) explains why he sometimes avoids the trough and heads into the handicapped, sit-down stalls. No worries, man–we’ve all done that ;>

Meanwhile, Ampontan over at Japundit highlights an island south of Japan that no one has ever heard of. It sounds like a really neat place to visit! Japundit keeps giving me more and more cool vacation ideas…

Battlecry (my favorite band ;>) has a song called “Outcast, Unclean” that was inspired by Thomas Covenant from Steven R. Donaldson’s Unbeliever books. The song’s a tribute; they didn’t set out to capitalize on Donaldson’s achievement. So they worried about what Donaldson would think, and actually wrote him to ask permission to release the song on their upcoming album.

Well, it took awhile, but Donaldson actually responded–and his answer is very cool:

I always feel flattered and gratified when people find inspiration for their own creativity in my work. I believe that even the most vicious of lawyers could not find fault with your “use” of my work. And I encourage you (belatedly, I know) to go ahead with your CD.

Awesome. “Outcast, Unclean” is probably my favorite Battlecry song. The CD wouldn’t be whole without it!

(Once I get my shit together and finish Battlecry’s website, I’ll link it. There, you’ll be able to view lyric sheets, CD liner art, and photos of the band. Later, you’ll get to buy the CD itself, or individual tracks as mp3. There will also be some bitchin’ music videos. Yes. Bitchin’. I am sure my lameness has embarrassed AJ beyond all mortal comprehension.)

Ruth Phillips has a lovely rumination today on the nature of art:

In art I believe the same form appears over and over again because art, surely, mirrors life. (I also believe the form’s presence is felt through it’s absence but that is a whole other subject!): The tension of home (The Base) – Moving away from home (The Journey) – Going back home (The Transformation). Add or detract to this shape the ingredients which go to mould the authorial voice:

Architecture, Climate, Ceremony, Time, Nature, Religion, Education, Diet, Animals…..

And ponder ‘The Voice’ as it is used in day to day life (giving sermons, whispering confession, singing in protest, communicating across valleys, gathering herds, sending to sleep, proclaiming love, healing, entertaining, distracting, celebrating…)

…and perhaps it is just possible that, across the seas, the forests and the deserts from each other, there might be two Romeo and Juliet stories, two folk tunes, two buildings, two painted skies that are, in their essence, ‘the same’. It is also possible that, because of their context and their authorial voice, they feel very different.

I loved the closing paragraph, too, but I won’t spoil it for you :)

Wow, I never realized how much life sucks for the Imperial family of Japan.

Japundit has an interesting piece today about Princess Sayako, who is giving up her status as royalty to marry a regular Joe, and the life she is leaving behind.

The Imperial Household Agency, part of the Japanese government, controls every aspect of the public life of the Imperial family, and a large part of their private life. The agency determines how their time is spent in official duties, where they go, what they wear, who they see, and, for the most part, what they say.

Nobody in the family can even have his/her own private telephone. Crazy stuff.

The article’s really eye-opening; I’d like to read more on the subject.

The “interview”, which was really just a written test, was for the position of copy editor at the Augusta Chronicle. I was shown to a private conference room and given an hour and a half in which to take the test, using no references.

I did not sign a nondisclosure agreement concerning this test, nor was I told that this procedure was a “trade secret” or anything of that sort, but if posting about it constitutes a violation of the company’s privacy, I will be more than happy to remove the following.

There were several parts to the test. The first few consisted of one-page, simple questions that focused on the writing/editing craft. Page 1: Grammar, word choice, and punctuation errors in short sentences. Find and correct them. Page 2: Commonly confused words. Read the sentences and choose the correct word (e.g., “The news editor was [adverse/averse] to the changes”). Page 3: Common misspellings. Find the misspelled words in a list and correct them. (An example misspelling: seperate)

Next came two pages I hadn’t even expected. One was a page full of people’s names. I had to identify who each person was. There were sports stars, pop singers, actors, writers, politicians…all kinds of people. This was bad. I am pretty horrible with names. (I did think it was great that “Winston Smith” was on there, though.) The other page had a series of questions about current events in fill-in-the-blank format. It was very, very sad how few of them I knew. I recognized most of the stories, but I didn’t know people’s names, nor did I know death toll numbers.

The last part was putting theory into practice, using real, unedited news stories. I had to look over the stories, correct errors, write down what questions I would have for the reporters in order to flesh out the articles, and create headlines. This was the most challenging (after all, questions I don’t know the answers to aren’t “challenging”), and also the most enjoyable. I think my headlines were okay, but I don’t know that they were gripping. My copy edits were good, and made the stories flow the way I’ve seen stories flow in other news articles, but I don’t know if I did them correctly, because I’ve never copy-edited for the news before and I have no training in it.

So I am not wholly confident about my performance. I think I did well in the writing and editing, but my showing in knowledge of people and events likely hurt my score considerably. There are half a dozen other applicants, and it will take time to pick “the best” (their words), so I will find out if they liked me sometime in the middle of next month. It all comes down to what they’re ultimately looking for, and how I performed against the others–if, for example, someone else got all the references right, but messed up a lot on grammar, would they pick me over that person?

Whatever the result, it’ll be interesting to hear what they have to say. Hopefully I’ll learn something.

In the window of about 12:45 am to 3 pm today (I’m buffering just in case), please wish me luck in my interview thingy. Some would say that I’m a shoo-in, but I really don’t know what to expect, so there’s a chance that I’ll misrepresent myself. I do know that I can do this job, and do it well. Hopefully that confidence will bleed into my performance today.

I’ll post more information–including, possibly, what this job is–after the interview. I tend to be secretive concerning my job hunting, both out of respect for the companies involved, and because I don’t want to jinx anything ;>

From Yahoo! News UK-Ireland:

Angered by the growing number of Internet scams, online “vigilantes” have started to take justice into their own hands by hacking into suspected fraud sites and defacing them.

These hackers have targeted fake websites set up to resemble the sites of banks or financial institutions in recent weeks, and have inserted new pages or messages. Some say “Warning – This was a Scam Site,” or “This Bank Was Fraudulent and Is Now Removed.”

The efforts by the self-proclaimed “hero hackers” come amid a surge in online schemes known as “phishing” in which victims are lured to fake websites to get passwords or other personal data.

I personally think this is awesome. Go for it, vigilante hackers!

The argument at the end of the article that vigilantism is bad is not very well supported. Most of the quoted persons liken it to vigilantes in the Old West, as if this explains everything.

But vigilantes in the Old West arose because the law couldn’t do anything. Vigilantism mostly ended once law and order asserted itself. In the meantime, vigilantes were all that stood between many people and disaster.

And so too are the vigilante hackers of today, who will keep shooting fraudulent websites dead and riding off into the sunset until the system evolves to solve the problems more peacefully.

Hi-yo Silver, away!

Via Drudge, here’s a New York Times piece on how American consumers are more and more turning to entertainment on demand. This, of course, spells doom for non-time-shifted media, such as theatrical films.

While I agree that people like the convenience of being able to watch what they want when they want, I don’t think the majority is in the position of being able to duplicate the theater experience at home. Right now, while that slice of society is a niche minority, the movie producers need to act.

1. Lower the standard ticket price.
   This will get more people coming to the movies on a whim. “Hey, while I’m out shopping, let me kill a couple hours. It’s only a couple bucks!”
2. Get rid of the anti-piracy ads in front of movies.
   You are preaching to the converted in most cases. It gets tiresome. People may start pirating just to avoid the stupid ads.
3. Plug people in.
   In the “old days”, a newsreel used to run before all the movies. Now we can get our news whenever and wherever we want. But in the movie theater, it’s polite to turn off your mobile devices. Why not replace much of what people miss out on before and after the movie? Start a Movie Theater Channel that offers newsbursts and other bite-sized chunks of information. A movie theater is like an oasis where you’re cut off from the rest of the world, and more and more I think people don’t want that. (Another idea is to offer wireless content to mobile devices before the movie starts–news, entertainment news, movie trailers, ringtones, etc.)
4. Sell merchandise: movie posters, action figures, soundtracks, etc.
   Give the movie theater more than just one function, and more people will find it reasonable to spend time there.
5. Rethink the standard movie theater setup.
   When I visited Kentucky last, Faye, Connor, Logan and I went to “Gattitown”, which is an expanded Mr. Gatti’s, similar to Dave & Buster’s. They had a room where they screened movies at all times, and a pizza/pasta/dessert buffet just outside. You got whatever food you wanted and sat down to watch movies. Theaters could do something similar–serve healthier food, whole meals, and allow people to eat while watching. Lighting might be tricky, but I think it’s doable. There could be a “dinner theater” and a “regular theater”, and the dinner theater could have long tables similar to those found in college lecture halls. Ticket price for the dinner theater would include the meal.
6. Create more comfortable areas outside the theaters.
   When you go into a movie house, you’re directed straight past the food and into the theater. Rarely are there chairs, and when there are they are usually uncomfortable benches. People are encouraged not to spend much time there. What about opening a coffeehouse style area where people who just saw a movie could sit down and discuss it? What about Wi-Fi access so people could blog about how great the movie was? Again, if movie theaters would diversify their offerings, more people would be willing to go more often. The idea of one stop shopping has taken hold in our culture, and movie theaters need to work on some sort of implementation.

Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head. I’m sure theaters could do even more to make themselves appealing.

It’s obvious, though, that they need to start working on it now.

Youths arrested for violating 116-year-old dueling law

I would have called this article “Fight Club”, especially given this quote:

“What’s wrong with hitting each other with consent,” one of the arrested youths was quoted as saying.

Vodafone problem leaves users without Internet, e-mail for hours

I can only imagine what that must have done to the social lives of teenagers…